


blood on the leaves

by aghamora



Series: Flaurel Ficlets [30]
Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 00:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5647987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a hitman doesn’t have a lot of rules – but the number one rule? Don’t go soft. Don’t hesitate and start to feel guilty, because guilt eats away at you like cancer, and it’s more deadly than any knife or gun could ever be. Compartmentalize.</p>
<p>And sure as hell, whatever you do, do <i>not</i> fall in love with your mark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blood on the leaves

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: 'Frank has to spy on/maybe kill Laurel as part of the job, and ends up falling in love with her or can't do it.'

Being a hitman, admittedly, doesn’t have a lot of rules.

Some have their own personal code, Frank knows. No women. No elderly people. No innocents. He finds it admirable, if a little deluded; they’re killers for Christ’s sake, why try to pretend to have any kind of a moral compass? He doesn’t have a code like that; he doesn’t discriminate. It’s what’s made him the best in the business. He just follows orders, always unflinching, never hesitating. Always a terse “I’m on it,” and the job is as good as done.

Being a hitman doesn’t have a lot of rules – but the number one rule? Don’t go soft. Don’t hesitate and start to feel guilty, because guilt eats away at you like cancer, and it’s more deadly than any knife or gun could ever be. Compartmentalize.

And sure as hell, whatever you do, do  _not_  fall in love with your mark.

Frank’s never had any trouble following that rule – that is, until one afternoon, when Annalise hands him the file of a girl by the name Laurel Castillo.

“Apparently, her father’s a drug lord down in Florida. Corrupt politician,” she explains, circling around her desk and taking a seat. “He’s pissed off the wrong cartel. They want to get back at him through his family, and they’re paying well. She lives alone, goes to school at Middleton. She shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

Frank nods, unquestioning as always. “I’m on it.”

Tracking down Laurel Castillo is easy. She seems to lead a surprisingly normal life for the daughter of a drug lord, hardly ever doing anything besides going to class, studying at the library, and returning home. He trails her for a few days, figuring it’ll be a simple breaking-and-entering hit; he’ll break into her apartment, wait there until she comes home, and do the job.

But then, on the night he’s planning to strike, she goes out to a bar with a friend; a petite, snooty-looking girl who drags the reluctant Laurel out of her apartment and drives them to a bar in Fishtown; The Parlour, a place Frank knows well. It’s a complication he hadn’t foreseen, but he tucks a pistol with a silencer attached into his pocket and follows them inside regardless. It’s what he’s good at: playing things by ear. Adapting.

He drinks alone at the bar for a while, watching them. Laurel’s prissy friend ends up ditching her within a few hours to drunkenly make out with a guy on the other side of the room, leaving her to glance around a bit awkwardly, as if she doesn’t know what to do with herself. It’s then that he changes tactics, gets up from where he sits at the other end of the bar, and makes his way over to her, putting on a smooth, easy smile as he slides onto the barstool next to her.

“Come here often?”

Laurel turns to look at him and blinks, a set of blue-grey eyes appraising him for a moment in silence, before she relaxes and quips, “Wow. That was an original opener.”

He grins, not expecting the snark. “What can I say? I’m a fountain of creativity.”

“I bet. What’s next?” she asks, a teasing note creeping into her voice, although she still doesn’t chance a smile. “You going to ask if you can buy me a drink?”

Frank just winks, and motions at the bartender. “You read my mind, princess.”

This is easy: seducing a girl to get close to her. He’s done it before, many times, but most of the time they’re vapid, obscenely rich middle-aged women someone is trying to off for their life insurance money. They’re not like this girl. A bit quiet, but funny. Well-spoken. Intelligent. There’s something honest in her eyes, too. Something genuine.

Not that it matters. Yet he can’t help but notice it as they laugh and joke, until she’s had a few drinks in her, and Frank leans in close, murmuring the obligatory, “What do you say we get out of here, huh?”

They go back to her place, their lips locking as she fumbles with the key to her door. Her kisses are drunk and sloppy; she’s not hammered, but she’s tipsy enough to be clumsy, and with every groping touch of her hands, he grows more and more aware of how easy this will be, like leading a lamb to the slaughter.

“I’ve never done this before,” she pants, as they make their way inside, casting off their coats. “A one night stand, I mean.”

Frank grins, putting on the most harmless look he can. “Well, who knows? Maybe I’ll be your first _and_ your last.”

She laughs. He doesn’t.

They fall down on her bed with Laurel on top of him, a mess of tangled limbs. He has no intentions of actually sleeping with her; her body won’t be found, of course, but he’s not taking the chance of leaving behind any DNA. This hit has already been riskier than he prefers. But then, all at once – and, thankfully, before he has to figure out what to do with the gun in his pocket when he disrobes – Laurel goes still atop him. He pulls back, surprised, and finds her eyes closed, her head lolling to one side.

She’d passed out. On top of him.

It’s his chance, and he’s not about to piss it away. Clenching his jaw, Frank nudges her off, stands, and reaches for the pistol in his pocket, but before he can withdraw it, Laurel rolls over, and he freezes, afraid that she’s still semi-conscious. She isn’t, however; she just makes a content, sleepy little hum and curls up into a ball.

Again, his hand goes for the gun in his pocket. Again, he hesitates – and this time it’s not because of anything she does. No, he hesitates… because all at once, out of nowhere, he can’t do it.

He should shoot her, right now, and be done with it while she’s defenseless. It’s more than likely that she won’t even feel anything in her sleep; he has impeccable aim. No one else will hear. It’ll be over quickly. It’ll be painless.  _Humane._  But the peaceful, serene look on this girl Laurel’s face stills his hand. Her hair is tangled and mussed in the most disarming way, her clothes rumpled, cheeks flushed from the cold. And Frank doesn’t know what the fuck it is about this girl, just another nameless, faceless victim – but he can’t do it.

His idiocy doesn’t end there. Like a fool, he finds a pen and paper, and leaves his (real) name and number, along with a bottle of Advil and a tall glass of water. He wants to see her again; that’s all he knows.

He doesn’t give a fuck if it makes him a dead man walking. He wants to see her again.

 

–

 

A week later, when Annalise asks why the job hasn’t been done yet, he gives her a carefully planned lie; the only lie he can think of that will buy him time:

“She’s pregnant. Let it slip while we were talking that some ex-boyfriend knocked her up, and I’m fine with killin’ her, but I won’t kill her kid.”

Annalise just raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Since when do you have a conscience?”

He doesn’t answer. She sighs.

“Well, what do you want me to do? If we don’t do it, our client will take care of her instead, and we’ll lose out on the 50k they’re offering.”

He feels inexplicable panic shoot through his veins, but outwardly, he remains calm, and shrugs. “So? Tell ‘em about the kid. Maybe they’re Catholic. Believe in that whole ‘saving innocent lives’ thing.”

Suspicion creeps into Annalise’s narrowed eyes, as she drums her fingernails on her desk. “Why the hell do you care so much about this girl?”

She sees right through him. Of course she does; he’s worked for Annalise’s twisted little firm of killers-for-hire for years. She knows him like she knows the back of her own hand, and he can’t ever really lie to her, no matter how hard he tries.

But he just shrugs right then, his eyes betraying nothing, and tries anyway. “I don’t.”

 

–

 

It works, amazingly enough. Their client backs off Laurel – at least for the time being, until they can be sure if she is or isn’t pregnant. It buys them time, and time is what he needs, to figure out… everything. To sort through the jumbled mess of lies he’s made, for absolutely no reason other than he can’t get Laurel out of his head.

“So. What do you do?” she asks him on their first official date at his place, after calling his number and vehemently apologizing for passing out on him.

He has the lie ready at hand, and doesn’t flinch. “I work for a law firm.”

“Really? I’m studying law. Which one?”

“Sterling & White. Associate.”

“Oh,” she says, looking a bit surprised. “I’ve never heard of you.”

He shrugs, turning back from where he stands at his stove to look at her. “I’m a newbie. The lowest on the totem pole. What about you? What got a girl like you into law?”

“’A girl like me?’” she chuckles. “I’ll take that as a compliment. And… I don’t know. I want to help people. Women, minorities. People that everyone steps all over. I want to make a difference, and everyone always says that I’m being an idealistic goody-goody when I tell them that, but-”

“Nah,” he cuts her off gently, pausing to look at Laurel intently, suddenly aware of the heavy meaning in his words. “You’re not. The world’s a terrible place. We could all use a bit ’a idealism.”

She flashes him a smile, sweet and timid, and lowers her eyes. Frank stares for a moment too long, and for the most fleeting of seconds, as he looks at that smile, he forgets who he is, and who she is, and who they are. As he looks at that smile, suddenly, they’re only two people, hidden away in this little corner of the world. A man and a woman.

Happy.  _Safe_.

 

–

 

By the fifth date, Frank becomes acutely aware of just how deep he’s in.

He kills in the darkness, and puts on a charming, innocuous smile for Laurel in the daylight. Most of what she knows about him isn’t true; his occupation, family, past. He leads two lives: one for her, and one for Annalise. He is two entirely different people: the good guy, and the cold-hearted, brutal killer. The man who was meant to kill  _her_.

Frank wants to tell her, more than anything. He wants to be honest with Laurel, and let her know everything, confess every dirty, filthy, disgusting secret. As the months pass with her, and he starts running out of time, he feels the true weight of his lies press down on him, growing heavier by the day.

At the end of the fifth month after meeting her, they make it official. And at the end of that same month, it all comes unraveled.

Annalise calls him into her office one day; a dark, dismal, foreboding little place in the basement of the bookstore she runs as a front. No windows, no light, with a leaky ceiling, smelling musty and dank. She closes the door behind him, and instructs him tensely to take a seat before her desk.

The moment he hears the lock on the door turn and click, trapping him, his stomach sinks.

“You know why you’re here, don’t you?” Annalise asks, her voice deadly calm.

She stands next to her desk, arms folded, but he keeps his cool. He doesn’t even blink.

“Can’t say that I do, boss.”

Her eyes call him on his bullshit, but her mouth stays shut. Instead, Annalise just reaches over onto her desk and grabs a stack of photos. With quick, precise movements, she lays them out in front of him.

They’re all of Laurel. Laurel by herself, walking down the street. Laurel on Middleton’s campus, books in hand. Laurel and him together, on a date at a restaurant downtown. Laurel and him together, kissing beneath the golden glow of the streetlights.

“I’ve been having Bonnie run surveillance on your little mark these past few months. Tell me, Frank,” Annalise says, pointing to Laurel in one of the photos that looks like it’d only been from last week, “does she look six months pregnant to you? That’s how far along she should be by now, after all, if we’re going by your timeline.”

“Annalise-”

“You seem happy together, I’ll give you two that. A lovely couple.”

“Look, I can explain-”

Annalise gives him a look of disbelief. “Explain what? How you went soft? What do you think I am, Frank? An idiot?”

He clenches his jaw, meeting her eyes. “What do you want?”

“I want you,” she tells him, her tone slow, measured, as she reaches for a pistol on her desk and holds it out to him, “to finish the job.”

Frank freezes.

He should’ve seen this coming, to be fair. He should’ve known how this would end – but he’d deluded himself. Deluded himself like the hitmen who have bullshit moral codes, who have standards, who fancy themselves good people; only he’d been worse all along. He’d deluded himself into thinking he was different somehow, better than all of them. That Laurel could somehow change him into a better man. Be his redemption.

He’d been the most deluded one, the whole time. He hadn’t even known it.

“No,” he growls. “No way in hell am I laying a single fucking finger on her.”

Annalise feigns surprise. “Are you sure? Because if you don’t do it, our client will. He’ll send someone else, and rest assured, it won’t be pretty.”

He shoots to his feet. “No-”

“He wants to get back at her father, and he’ll make a gruesome, bloody show of torturing and killing her. Is that what you want? Her to suffer?” A lump gathers in his throat, huge and painful, and he doesn’t answer. As if sensing that, Annalise holds out the gun to him once more, lowering her voice. “Do it yourself. You know how to make it painless, so she won’t feel a thing. Dip into Bonnie’s stash of cyanide, if you want to. Slip it in her coffee.”

“I won’t,” he asserts. “I  _won’t_ , Annalise.”

Annalise gives him a pitying smile. “Yes you will. You love her too much to let anyone hurt her that way.”

For a third time, he holds out the gun. This time, Frank knows he has no choice but to take it.

 

–

 

He ponders how to do it for longer than he should. He fucking _tortures_ himself over it, before he finally sucks it up, grabs the gun, texts Laurel to come over, and takes a seat in one of his armchairs to wait. The room is pitch black, save for the little lamp on the table beside him, next to where the gun rests, fittingly eerie and dark. He’d thought about poisoning her, or at the very least killing her while she was asleep – but that would make him a coward, and he owes Laurel this, at least. Owes her an explanation, face to face.

His door creaks open around half an hour later, and in steps Laurel with the key he’d given her last week, clad in her grey pea coat. She glances around for a moment, confused, before her eyes come to rest on him in the corner, entirely oblivious to the trap she has just wandered into.

“Frank? Hey, what’s going on?”

He hesitates, considers stashing the gun away and pretending like nothing is wrong, and having one last, blessedly normal night with her. But instead Frank looks up, and meets her eyes, his voice deep and grim.

“We need to talk. I gotta tell you something.”

Her keys clatter on the table as she sets them down, approaching warily, as if preparing to bolt at any moment.

“I… don’t understand. What do you need to tell me?”

“I’m not a lawyer,” is all he says, without beating around the bush. “I didn’t go to law school. Hell, I didn’t even go to college.”

Laurel stops a few feet away from him and folds her arms, brow furrowed. “Um, all right. Why’d you lie about that?”

“Because…” he drifts off, lowering his eyes.

“Because… why?”

“’Cause I couldn’t tell you what I really do.”

Confusion flickers in her eyes once more, and she gulps almost audibly when she notices the gun resting beside him. “This… You’re scaring me, Frank.”

_Good. Be scared. This is who I really am, who I’ve been all along. A monster. A murderer._

He pauses, then begins, the truth spilling out, each word searing his tongue, “I’m a hitman. I kill people, for a living. That’s what I really do.”

Laurel’s eyes go wide, and glaze over with tears. She gulps, shaking her head. “No…”

“It’s why I met you in the first place at that bar. I was supposed to kill you that night.”

Laurel curls in on herself, retreating like a turtle into her shell. A sob escapes her, and she clutches her arms to her body, horrified. “No, no, no-”

“It’s ‘cause of your dad. He made the wrong people angry, and they want to get back at him by hurtin’ you.”

“No-”

“But I couldn’t do it. So I lied. Told ‘em you were pregnant, for the first few months, and that I wouldn’t kill a kid. I tried to protect you. That got them off your trail for a while, but…”

Laurel meets his eyes, trembling visibly in the moonlight. “So what? W-what’re you saying?”

His hand creeps over to the gun, tears burning his eyes like acid. His limbs are heavy, cold. He feels dead on the inside, his soul rotting within him, foul and disgusting.

“They know the truth now. And they’re gonna send someone after you – and they’ll find you, wherever you go. Even if you change your name. People like that… they don’t stop ‘til they get what they want. They’ll make it hurt. They’ll make it hurt like fucking hell before they kill you-”

“And so what?” she breathes, still shaking, though there’s an air of panicked composure about her. “I-is that why you’re here? To kill me instead? P… put me down? Humanely – like I’m an animal?”

The gun weighs a million pounds when he picks it up and aims it at her. His grip is unsteady when he cocks it, and he feels a hell of a lot like turning it on himself when Laurel flinches, squeezing her eyes shut in fear.

“I’m sorry,” is all he can say, his voice cracking. “So fucking sorry, Laurel.”

A look of serenity makes its way onto her features, then; out of nowhere, from some place deep within her. Her eyes are still full of tears, but she stops trembling, and raises her chin to meet his eyes, fearless in the face of death.

“Okay,” she murmurs, resigned, her voice a mere whisper. “Do it.”

He hesitates. He pictures it, briefly: pulling the trigger, listening to the gunshot, watching Laurel fall to the ground, dead. He pictures the blood, her blood, and feels like hurling, and so he just stares at her with tears blurring his vision – but no, no, he can’t cry. He won’t be able to aim if he does, and he’ll hurt her if he doesn’t aim right.

And he could never hurt her. He could never hurt her.

“Do it,” Laurel orders again, louder this time. Still, he doesn’t move, and she exhales sharply, crying, “ _Do it_!”

His finger almost squeezes the trigger.  _Almost._  He applies the tiniest bit of pressure, fully intending to press it down all the way and shoot, but then-

He backs off. He can’t. If he couldn’t do it that night, when her eyes had been closed and she’d been so blissfully unsuspecting, then he sure as hell can’t do it now, when she’s looking straight at him with wide, tearful, terrified eyes.

So he lowers the gun, and drops it with a low  _clunk_ , taking a step back, gulping, and shaking his head.

He doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t either; she just stands there trembling, as he ambles slowly over to his couch and plops down on it, his body a million-pound weight, the heaviest thing in the world. He knows what he’s doing, knows what it’ll mean for her – but he can’t do it. Like before, he can’t. If it makes him a coward, he’s a coward, but he can’t.

He can’t.

“Go,” he tells her weakly. “Get out of Philly. Go back home to your folks. That’s your best bet. You’re not safe here. Or with me. Just… go.”

_Don’t leave. Please, don’t leave. I’ll keep you safe. You’re safe with me. I’d die for you. Kill for you. Anything._

He turns away, and all he can hear is footsteps on his hardwood floor for a moment, a low  _thump, thump, thump_. Frank assumes it’s only Laurel heading for the door – but then all of a sudden he hears the scraping of the metal gun on the floor as it’s being picked up, and the undeniable _click_  as it is cocked.

Bewildered, he turns, just in time to watch Laurel take one look at him with cold, hard eyes, aim the gun at his leg, and fire.

_Bam!_

It’s all a blur after that. Pain sears through him, and he roars, clutching his leg, falling onto the floor, and feeling warm, sticky blood coat his hands through his slacks. Across the room, he sees Laurel go for her bag and pull out her phone, dialing frantically and holding it up to her ear.

“Th-there’s a man. I’m at his apartment. He tried to kill me. Shoot me – but I-I shot him. Come quickly. Hurry, please, please-”

He gives himself over to the pain, then, and fades out of consciousness. The last thing he hears is Laurel’s voice:  _hurry, hurry, please, hurry._

 

–

 

He goes to jail.

He confesses to a few other killings, gives the police the locations of the bodies without outing Annalise, and that is enough for them to convict him. He let his shitty public defender lose his case; he doesn’t care, not really. The fight is over, the war is lost, and he’s done for.

It’s what he deserves anyway, to pay the price for his crimes. To repent every sin he’s ever committed – and trust him, there are many. He’s lost Laurel too, and Laurel was all that’d really made him want to keep living, given him a reason to keep out of jail. She had been hope, light, beauty. She had been every good, merciful thing in the world, and he hadn’t deserved her.

This is what he deserves, now.

He doesn’t hear anything for three months, and he can only assume that her father’s enemies have gotten to her, and she’s long dead. Knowing that, knowing that he’s lost her… That’s the worst punishment of them all, worse than incarceration could ever be.

But then, one afternoon, after choking down the shitty prison cafeteria food, one of the guards pulls him aside.

“Delfino. You got a visitor.”

He frowns. His family has visited, a few times, but no one had called to tell him they would be coming today. Frank follows the man into the visitation room regardless, and takes a seat in the first chair where the guard directs him – and the moment he looks up the Plexiglas separating him from the other side, he freezes.

His hand goes for the phone, grasping it and putting it up to his ear. Holding his gaze steadily, Laurel does the same.

“You’re alive,” is all he says at first, stunned. “I thought… those guys-”

“My dad took care of them,” Laurel answers, her features cold. “No one’s going to hurt me now.”

He nods, grimly. A moment passes in silence, and then, she sighs.

“You should’ve told me. That I was in danger. Y-you shouldn’t have… lied about who you were for so long.”

He pauses. “I… Look, I knew you’d never trust me after you knew who I was. And I couldn’t tell you you were in danger unless I told you who I was. So I didn’t. I wanted you. I wanted us to be… normal.”

“Yeah, well,” Laurel mutters. “You were right. I  _don’t_ trust you.”

Another moment of silence. Then-

“It was all a lie, wasn’t it?” she asks, tears beading in her eyes. “Us. Everything you ever told me.”

“It wasn’t all a lie,” Frank confesses. “I loved you. That part was real.”

“You saved me, by telling me those men wanted to kill me. I’d be dead if I hadn’t known. You saved me, a-and you lied to me, the whole time, and you held a gun to my head – and God, how do you ever think I can just…forgivethat?”

He deflates, his shoulders sagging in resignation. “I don’t. I can’t ask you to.”

A tear goes tumbling down her cheek. She wipes it away with one hand, and shakes her head.

“Why’d you confess? You didn’t have to. You could’ve stayed out of here, if you’d wanted.”

“I didn’t want to,” Frank says, his eyes locked on hers. “I lost you, for good. And I knew I couldn’t keep on lyin’ like I was. Always figured I’d end up in prison one day anyway. At least it’s got cable TV.”

She laughs, half-heartedly. So does he. Then, she sobers up and rubs her lips together in contemplation, with a look of sorrow buried deep in her eyes.

“I should go,” she sighs into the phone.

He nods understandingly, and sends a sad little smile her way. “Come back and visit sometimes, huh? Gets boring around here.”

Laurel bristles. “Frank, I don’t know if-”

The words crush him, fucking crush him, but he doesn’t flinch. Instead, he just nods again, because he understands.

“I get it.” A pause, then, “Bye, Laurel.”

Her lower lip quivers just for a second, and she hangs up the phone with a shaking hand, mouthing a silent ‘goodbye’ back, through the glass. It’s with that that Laurel Castillo leaves him, disappearing out of view and around the corner, and it’s the first time he knows loss. Real loss. Crushing, awful, agonizing, suffocating loss.

He has no one to blame but himself, Frank knows. That doesn’t lessen the pain. Somehow, it only makes it worse.

 

–

 

A month passes. Then two. He’s surprised he’s still alive in here, if he’s being honest. Surprised Annalise hasn’t sent someone to off him yet, to keep him from spilling any secrets about her or her business in exchange for early release.

Nothing happens. Then, one night in July, he hears his cell door creak open in the middle of the night, and he knows it’s time.

A man he doesn’t recognize, clad in a guard’s uniform, steps inside and orders him up in a voice with a faint Hispanic accent. He obeys without hesitation, and follows him down the hall, with all the composure of a condemned man approaching the electric chair. He’s ready. He doesn’t ask where they’re going. He knows where  _he’s_ going, anyway. Hell, most likely. He isn’t religious, but he believes in hell; it must exist, for people like him. An eternity of fire and flames and misery, for every life he’s taken.

The man turns a corner then, grabs something off a nearby shelf, and leads him over to a back door. He holds out the bundle to Frank without explanation, and he furrows his brow when he sees what it is: clothes, shoes, and cash.

He’s about to look up and ask the man what the hell it is – when all at once he tells him, “Victor Castillo sends his regards.”

_Castillo._

Laurel.

His head spinning, heart pounding, and not about to question him further, Frank just nods, takes the bundle, and steps outside into the sticky, humid summer night. It’s then that he catches sight of the pair of headlights just down the stairs, where a car idles, humming away. Leaning against its passenger side door is Laurel, clad in a yellow sundress, her arms folded defensively as she watches him approach.

He feels like weeping at the sight of her, after spending so many months in this hellish animal pen they call prison. Frank comes to a stop a few feet away from Laurel, and takes in the sight of her as if she’s a mirage, some beautiful dream from which he might awake at any second, if he makes a wrong move.

“Laurel? What’s goin’ on?”

“You’re dead,” she tells him simply. “Now get in.”

“I’m what?”

Laurel exhales, fidgeting impatiently. “As far as the prison is concerned, you’re dead. You died in an altercation with another inmate in the showers this morning. You were… beaten so badly that your face was unrecognizable. You’ll be cremated. Your ashes will be sent back to your family.”

He’s dead. Erased off the face of the earth, the burden of his identity lifted from his shoulders. Frank doesn’t have to ask to know that it was all the work of her father. Instead, he just asks:

“Why’d you do all this for me?”

“I’m leaving town. Well – the country. My dad’s sending me to France, ‘for my own protection’,” she explains, then meets his eyes. “I want you to come with me.”

He takes a step closer, bewildered. “Thought you didn’t trust me anymore.”

“I don’t know if I do. Or… if I ever even  _can_ , again,” Laurel answers. “But my dad wants someone protecting me. I know you will now, no matter what.”

“I will,” he tells her firmly, reaching out to place his hand on her cheek. “I swear to God I will, Laurel-”

But she shrinks away from his touch, recoiling, and Frank lowers his hand. His face falls. For a while, she just takes a good, long look at him, contemplation flickering behind her eyes, before folding her arms and flattening her lips into a line.

“Look, I’m not saying we’ll never be together again. I loved you, and… I  _still_ love you. I need… time, that’s all.”

“As much time as you need,” he agrees, with a solemn nod. “I promise.”

They’d always been running out of time, before, when he’d lain on a bed of lies so tangled and twisted it’d seemed that every other word coming out of his mouth wasn’t true. Time had always been so precious, and so scarce, Frank thinks, as he takes a seat in the passenger side and watches Laurel take her place behind the wheel. They’d never seemed to have enough

And now… Now, they have all the time in the world. All the time they could ever need.


End file.
